Well done, mate. As for professional miniatures, I've seen some for sale that were nowhere near as good as this. You're right, you're not going to go and take out the crown for Worlds Greatest Miniature Maker Feller Evar(tm), but credit where credit's due.

It looks a bit... like he's falling backwards. That may just be the angle of the shot - I suspect it may be. I await sideshots.

As for painting, get hold of a decent photo editing program, and 'paint' over a picture. You can check colour schemes without actually risking stuffing up the beastie.

Thanks! (both for the praise and the tip about checking colour schemes on my computer: I think I'm going to try that.)

About the tipping over: he's not tipping as much to the front as I planned for his charging position, which does give a backwards impression. The reason is that the majority of the mass is in the body, and if I tilt that too much to the front, I get an unstable mini. I guess I might have tilted him a few degrees more, even putting him more to the back of the base, but I chose for maximum balance. The wings should also be fanning out more to the back.

It's less a question of being artistic as you might think.
Preparation gets you a long way. Make sure you know where you're going. A few rough sketches and browsing the internet for some short tutorials can do wonders.
The main skill which helped me is patience, lots of patience. Work until you're happy with a part, then stop to let it dry. If you're not happy, remove and start over, until you are happy. If you're getting really frustrated, stop and start over the next day.
I guess you need less patience if you are more talented.

For those interested in how he did: he almost died gloriously in battle, after the party fighter was

I only got past this once!

blurred, mirror imaged and stoneskinned. But as he lay unconsciously on the battle field, his two evil goblin twins guardian angels teleported him out to fight another day.
I worked too hard on this to be able to use him only once! And everybody loves recurring villains, right?

Love it Bbender, I absolutley love it. I have one question though, why did you not paint him?

thanks!

Don't worry, I'm going to paint him, but I've got almost no experience painting miniatures, and I don't want to ruin it. I'm first going to paint some other miniatures I've got lying around, to try out some techniques.